London politics
fromwww.standard.co.uk
1 day agoTroubled waters: Will Hammersmith Bridge ever reopen?
Hammersmith Bridge faces a funding deadlock for repairs, with costs reaching £250 million and no clear resolution in sight after seven years.
The study concludes that the rail link could deliver strong economic returns under both two-runway and three-runway expansion scenarios at Heathrow Airport, indicating its potential impact on regional connectivity.
Through Community Facilities Districts (CFD), Municipal Utility Districts (MUD), Public Improvement Districts (PID), Community Development Districts (CDD) and reimbursement districts (RD), builders can potentially shift infrastructure costs off their balance sheets and onto special districts that homebuyers ultimately absorb through property taxes without potentially adding debt to the builder's books.
Centuri ended 2025 with a $5.9 billion backlog, up 59% from the prior year, 82% of which was MSA work. For 2026, the company already has approximately $1.1 billion in year-to-date bookings, covering over 85% of the midpoint of its 2026 base revenue guidance.
EWP is a pure-play bet on Spanish large-cap equities. It tracks the MSCI Spain Index and holds roughly 30 publicly traded Spanish companies, giving investors concentrated exposure to a single economy rather than the blended eurozone exposure you'd get from a broader fund. The ETF has been around since March 1996 and currently holds about $1.9 billion in net assets.
Data center electricity consumption is on pace to exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours by 2030, up from just 460 TWh in 2024, and it will comprise 10% of the U.S.' power consumption. Utilities ETFs like Virtus Reaves Utilities ETF (NYSEARCA:UTES), First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index Fund (NASDAQ:GRID), and First Trust Utilities AlphaDEX Fund (NYSEARCA:FXU) are well positioned to benefit, not just from electricity demand, but all the downstream effects from an ongoing rapid buildout of infrastructure to support them.
The S&P Global Construction PMI fell to 44.5 in February, marking 14 consecutive months of declining activity-a concerning trend for an industry crucial to addressing Britain's housing deficit. The residential building market is particularly struggling, with the sub-index for housebuilding dropping to 37.0, indicating a rapid decline in new home construction.
When routes are well organized, there are clear directional signs, and speed limits become reasonable. The early installation of warning signs allows transport companies to plan deliveries more accurately and avoid delays. For businesses, time is money. When a truck carrying goods does not spend hours detouring due to an unclear traffic scheme or stuck in traffic where it could have been avoided thanks to competent traffic management, fuel costs, driver wages, and vehicle maintenance costs are reduced.
The City of Toronto's 2026 budget offers relief many homeowners were looking for in its property tax increase, but it also lays bare the massive amount of infrastructure work hanging over the city in the coming years which, in some cases, may be deferred. With budget season now in full swing at city hall, several city departments will sit in front of the budget committee this week to give presentations on their financial needs this year. Among them will be the parks and recreation department, which is caught up in a nearly $2 billion deferral of work in the 10-year capital plan, which is the city's plan to maintain, renew and grow infrastructure. That work was supposed to be funded by development charges that builders pay to the city, but recent provincial legislation made it so developers could pay those fees once their buildings are occupied, as opposed to when they get their building permits. The change means the city will receive that revenue years later than under the previous rules, so the work it would fund has to be put off, according to city budget documents.
Global-E posted $220.8 million in revenue, up 25.5% year-over-year, with gross margins at 45.1%. The company generated $13.2 million in net income, but profit margin remained razor-thin at 0.83%. Operating margin reached 7.7%, showing the business model works operationally, but capital efficiency remains a problem. Return on equity sits at just 0.81%, meaning the company barely generates returns on deployed capital. That's the core issue Wall Street keeps circling back to.
Or take Cologne's opera house. Built in the 1950s as a symbol of modern democracy, it was a cultural jewel. By 2012, it needed renovation. The plan sounded simple: three years of work, reopening in 2015. Fast-forward to today: The building, which comprises the opera itself, a theater with two stages, and a children's opera with its own stage, remains a construction site.
A bridge failure might sound like something from a blockbuster, but real damage usually creeps in slowly. Across the nation, engineers watch thousands of bridges that remain open, yet are far from their best condition. "Structurally deficient" is not a death sentence, but it signals repairs can no longer wait. These 10 bridges handle massive traffic and are a serious concern nationwide today.
Nobody wants a landfill in their backyard, which is exactly why the companies that own them print money. The waste management industry is an oligopoly disguised as a utility. Garbage never stops, permits for new landfills are nearly impossible to obtain, and the handful of players controlling North America's disposal infrastructure enjoy pricing power that makes telecom companies jealous. These stocks compound predictably through recessions, inflation cycles, and regulatory shifts.
Construction remains paused for now and we continue to work with our contractors to plan how to deploy these funds in the most effective way and get workers back on the job to resume some construction as soon as possible,
In December, 19 residents of Dartmouth Square in Ranelagh withdrew judicial review proceedings after Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) agreed to purchase 10 properties. While no sale price has been agreed, Mr Sweeney says each of the residents have agreed to the process. Mr Sweeney confirmed that they have also offered to buy another five properties in the area after people raised concerns about the impact of construction. The houses involved will back on to the proposed station at Charlemont.
Official evaluations from National Highways, some of which had been held back by the Department for Transport (DfT) since completion in 2023, showed that a slew of big projects to convert the hard shoulder on the M1, M4, M6 and M25 were rated as poor or very poor value. The AA said the long-awaited reports revealed smart motorways had been a catastrophic waste of time, money and effort, although the government said they showed the project could allow more vehicles to travel safely.
Cedar Street just came out victorious in a multi-year saga with the city of La Canada Flintridge, winning the first successful builder's remedy case in California Superior Court for its 80-unit mixed-use project at 600 Foothill Boulevard and setting a path for other developers to build. But the fight may have left its scars, in time, stress and now soured relationships with some officials.
Construction costs globally are set to rise by 2.4% in 2026, but growing uncertainty is the real challenge to project delivery. The findings are captured in 'Construction in 2026: Where Certainty Comes from Agility' a new report published by Currie & Brown, a world-leading provider of cost management, project management and advisory services. UK market: steady costs, fragile confidence At 3.6%, the UK sits in the middle of the global range of forecast cost escalation for 2026.
The global average building utilization rate dramatically jumped in 2025 to 53%, the highest since before the pandemic, validating the effectiveness of hybrid strategies in driving more in-office activity, according to CBRE. Utilization rates were 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023, compared to the 65% that most respondents to CBRE's global workplace occupancy benchmarking program identified as their target.